Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace
by CaffieneKitty
Summary: Hypothetical Missing scene for Season 2 Episode Hunted. Probably AU, all things considered. POV Ava. Complete


**Summary:** **_Spoilers for Season 2_** Hypothetical Missing scene for "Hunted" 2.10 Probably AU, all things considered. POV Ava. Gore and mild language.  
**Disclaimer: **Not even Ava and her fiancee (who I'm calling Ryan since he never got a name) are mine. Wah.

**Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace**  
by CaffieneKitty  
- - -

"Ava?" said Ryan, rolling over as Ava pulled the covers on her side of the bed down by reflex.

Darn it. She thought she'd been quiet enough. "Hi. Sorry, I just got in. I didn't want to wake you."

"How'd your conference go?"

"It, uh..." She faltered. Why'd he have to wake up? She couldn't talk to him now, she needed to sleep this crazy day out of her head before she talked to Ryan and she wouldn't be sleeping until she heard from Sam. She put her cellphone, which she'd been clutching in case the 'vibrate' ringer went off, down on the bedside table.

"Ava? What's wrong? Did your conference-"

"-Uh. Okay. Ryan?" He was awake, she wasn't sleeping and she very much didn't want to be alone in chasing her own tail with worry until Sam called. Not that Ryan knew anything about Sam, or where she'd really been the past couple days. That was healthy in a relationship. "Ryan, I have to tell you something."

"What's that, sweetness? Are you cheating on me?" He smiled in a way that made Ava think he was certain she wasn't, but maybe the thought excited him or something. Hunh. Kinky. Ava shook her head.

"No, of course not, it's just." She turned and looked at her cellphone on the bedside table. "Oh, god, you're gonna think I'm nuts but I just think it's important we are totally honest with each other and, and, well, see, here's the thing." Ava turned around and faced her fiancee. Her sweet, wonderful, loving fiancee who was her best friend and understood her and accepted her and made her feel good about herself for the first time in her miserable life.

He smiled and watched her attentively. "What is it? Whatever it is, it can't be that bad." His voice always made things seem like not such a big deal. Maybe she could just not tell him, keep her whacko vision thing a secret.

Yeah, the whole keeping secrets thing worked out great for mom and dad, too, didn't it.

Ava took another deep breath. She stood up and paced experimentally. Pacing helped. "Here's the thing. And I want to say again, before I say this that I'm not nuts. Um," She thumped her right hand against her hip, "I, um, those nightmares I've been having? They, um. They're not nightmares. They're... like... visions, of people dying. They come true."

Her fiance looked concerned, "Oh sweetie, that's awful. You see people dying in your dreams, that's horrible. Let me make you some tea."

"Ryan," she smiled in exasperation, "you're sweet, but tea isn't going to help." She breathed again, paced a little more, turning the corner to pace along the end of the bed. "I see people dying, and then they die. I saw this guy," she pulled out the folded newspaper from her bag on the dresser and showed it to him, "die days before it happened."

"Oh?" said her fiance, barely glancing at the clipping. "It was probably just a coincidence. It-"

"No. I dreamed it, exactly like it happened. Another guy stabbed him in a parking lot. This guy!" She poked the picture.

"Memory's funny sometimes," Ryan soothed, getting out of bed. "You see something that's close and your memory puts it in as what it actually was."

"See, that's what I thought, but this guy I went to-"

"What guy is this then?" Ryan asked blandly.

"This other guy. I saw him get blown up in my dream, so I went to find him and stop him from blowing up, because, you know, polite and stuff," she waved a hand vaguely.

Ryan nodded, smiling like he was maybe waiting for a punch-line.

"-and this guy said he has visions too, and I helped him steal this other guy's, the dead guy, the one that was stabbed in the parking lot, this other dead guy's psych files, and that was _so_ cool!" Ava knew she was babbling, but it was like a dam had burst, "And the stuff in the guy's file was all kinds of crazy, about frying things with his hands and some guy with yellow eyes telling him to do bad things, and it's got something to do with me and this guy and we're supposed to become like, warriors of Hell or something, but that's kind of crap, really, I think, but this guy said it was all true, and then there was someone shooting at us, and this guy's brother was kidnapped, and he went to go get him which is exactly like it happened in my dream and I hope he calls soon and lets me know he didn't explode or _I'm_ gonna explode and-"

"Ava..."

"I know I'm sorry, I'm babbling, it's nuts, and you think I'm nuts and you're don't want to marry a fruitcake and-"

"Ava, shut up."

Ava blinked and looked at her fiancee, who looked the same as he usually did, standing there in his t-shirt and boxers in their bedroom with the teddy bear on the bedside table behind him, except... it was weird. It was like for the first time in the year and a half that she'd known him, he'd stood up straight. He seemed taller, broader, more imposing, and a heck of a lot less friendly and soothing.

"Did, did you tell me to shut-"

"Yes, Ava. Shut up." He looked kind of pissed, actually, "What was the name of this guy?"

"Oh!" Oh god, now he really did think- "Oh, no, it wasn't- I'm not- you think I'm making up crazy stories because I'm cheating or something but I'd never-"

"Don't be absurd." He scowled and waved a hand dismissively, "I couldn't care less if you cheated. Answer me."

"It- it was Sam," Ava said, stunned, "Sam Winchester. What do you mean you don't care if-"

"And the other one, the one you saw killed, that was-" his eyes closed for a moment, then opened. "-Scott Carey."

"Uh, yeah." SHe didn't think he'd looked at the clipping that close. "How'd you-"

"There was someone shooting at you and Sam? Who?"

"He- Sam didn't know. The guy kidnapped his brother. And-"

"Was it the same one that killed Scott Carey?"

"I dunno, maybe, what the heck? What's going on Ryan?"

"You want to know what's going on Ava? Some rancid human meat-sack has started hunting you all down. Far too early. They're getting clever. I'm going to have to report back."

"Ryan, what? I don't understand?"

Ryan smirked. Ryan never smirked. Ryan was too nice to smirk. "Won't be quite as artistic as I was hoping, but the game is changing. Can't have the humans fighting back yet. He won't be pleased about this." As Ava searched her fiancee's eyes from where she stood, he blinked, and his eyes- she would swear that his eyes went jet black. But the light in the bedroom was pretty crappy.

"Goodbye Ava. I was looking forward to our honeymoon." Ryan's mouth twisted in dissatisfaction. "You would have broken so beautifully. Like a stained glass window..."

"Sam was right? All the crazy stuff about demons?"

"Yes. And now that he's told you, it makes things tricky. But not impossible. More of a challenge. It's been fun. Watching you being oblivious. You would have broken too fast almost, if this hadn't happened to open your eyes." Ryan... twinkled. "Delayed gratification is so much sweeter."

"What's up with you, you're all... moustache-twirly."

He laughed. Definitely not a nice laugh. "Sorry, innate weakness for the dramatic. You should see the ones who get girl bodies. Some of them really hoochie it up." He looked momentarily wistful.

"This is crazy." Ava shook her head. "You aren't a demon. We're getting married. I've known you since college."

"Have you?" His hand dropped from her face, and he stepped back to the edge of the bed. "See you later." He whispered and winked one definitely black eye. 

"Ryan, what-?" Ava watched stunned as her fiance tilted his head back and barfed a massive cloud of black stuff at the ceiling, and then fell back onto the bed. The cloud buzzed around the room like it was really, truly pissed and flung itself at the window, popping the latch and leaving yellow dust on the windowsill.

"Oh holy crap!" said Ava, "What was that?" She looked over to where her fiancee lay face up on the bed. Something was definitely wrong. He was gasping, making whimpery grunting noises. His shirt was going red and he was clutching his throat... Blood. How-? Blood was coming from everywhere on Ryan's body, seeping up through his undamaged shirt, gushing from his throat...

Ava was on her knees beside the bed before she knew it, hands fluttering, pulling at the blankets, blood on her hands, her arms, "Oh god, oh god, Ryan!" Trying to find some single wound to put pressure on, but the blanket wouldn't reach far enough and how had whatever that was cut him in the first place and oh god her fiancee was dying in front of her and _what the hell was that black crap that flew out the window!_

Her fiancee gasped, gurgled and looked at her, pushing her away weakly with his knee and elbow, no recognition in his totally normal-now eyes, just confusion, panic and pain. He died, staring at her like she was a total stranger, still trying to push her away.

Ava stood slowly, gasping, sliding her bare and blood-sticky right foot around the corner of the bed. "Ryan?" she whispered, ludicrously at the very dead corpse of the man she'd never actually met, apparently. She'd been engaged to the black stuff inside him.

Her mind spun giddily, thinking of the wedding invitations she hadn't finished, and being glad she'd never sent them because writing all those people again to tell them the wedding was off because the demon she'd been engaged to had run off at the last minute because how do you fit a cloud of black crap into a tuxedo and canceling the wedding would be a giant pain in the-

She covered her mouth with her hand and looked around in shock, tears running down her face. Ryan was dead. She inhaled jerkily through her fingers; her lungs felt like they didn't want air in them anymore. She pulled the engagement ring from her finger, held it in her hand for a while, just staring at the cooling corpse of the stranger she'd loved, and then dropped the ring to the floor.

"I should call someone," Ava said to the room. Who? The cops? _ Excuse me officer, my fiancee just barfed up a demon and then his throat spontaneously slashed itself._ So very no. Her friends from the office, or the gym? Also, very no. It was true what they said about calling your true friends to move a body. It sucked that it took this for Ava to realize she had no true friends. Mom? What would mom do from Florida? Mom would have her committed. "There's no one I can call."

Sam.

But she couldn't call him, what if he was sneaking into the house with the bomb and his phone went off? She had to get back to Lafayette. Sam was in Lafayette. Sam was the only one who knew about this demon stuff. If she tried to explain it to anyone else they'd think she went crazy and murdered Ryan.

Ava wiped the worst of the blood off of her hands and arms onto the comforter - _mom sent us that comforter_ - grabbed her wallet and the overnight bag she hadn't unpacked yet, throwing a long coat on over her bloody nightgown. She was at the front door before she thought better of driving her car away from a house with a fresh corpse in it so soon after arriving. She'd seen cop shows.

Ava turned around and went out the back of the house, walking away, out the back gate and down the alley. The bus wasn't far. There had to be a bus to Lafayette at this hour of the night. She'd go to Lafayette. Sam would know what to do. If he wasn't blown up.

"Please, Sam, don't be blown up," Ava muttered as she walked away from the remains of her life.

- - -  
(That's all.)


End file.
